


Keep Your Head Up (Keep Your Love)

by knune



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Graduation, M/M, Make Up, Off campus boyfriend, not even that angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knune/pseuds/knune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy is just an average guy, working at a hospital in San Francisco. He doesn't plan on meeting Jim Kirk, Starfleet cadet, and he sure as hell doesn't plan on falling in love with someone who is going to graduate and sail off to the nethermost regions of the galaxy sooner rather than later. He doesn't plan it, but it sure as shit happens anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Your Head Up (Keep Your Love)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I started this fic over a year ago (maybe longer) and recently decided to try to finish it off. This is what came out of it. Any discrepancies in the flow is probably due to this but hey, I finished an abandoned fic!
> 
> Title is from [Stubborn Love - The Lumineers](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttvIhYWLhQI). 
> 
> Also, big thanks to Hora_tio for looking this over for me!

*

There’s nothing special about the way they meet. There’s no funny story behind it, no amusing anecdote that they can share at parties. It’s boring and cliché and almost never worth mentioning. 

Sometimes people ask though, because it’s always the petty details that keep conversations flowing. McCoy answers with a roll of his eyes and a shake of his head. This is as polite as he gets. 

What people don’t realize is that it doesn’t matter. They don’t need to know that Jim picks McCoy up in the dairy aisle of the local market at two in the morning. Jim, wearing a shirt with at least four holes in it, is drunk and McCoy, still in his hospital scrubs, hungover. This is the way they meet but it’s not a story that bears repeating. 

How they meet doesn’t matter. It just matters that they do. 

*

They don’t fuck on their first date. (Nobody needs to know that either.) They do share a pizza at a rundown diner on the outskirts of the city, nurse a pitcher of cheap beer and talk about things that aren’t important. Jim tells drinking stories, because those always impress, and McCoy doesn’t talk about anything. It doesn’t matter that McCoy only listens because Jim talks enough for the both of them. 

Jim has enough drinking stories to last a lifetime. He must’ve started drinking when he was in kindergarten. McCoy doesn’t ask though, just wraps his hand around his warm beer and watches the curve of Jim’s lips as he talks. He sees the way Jim’s nose is slightly off center, like it’s been broken one too many times and never set correctly, how his face is scarred and never had a dermal regenerator run over the soft flesh. McCoy doesn’t ask and Jim doesn’t tell. 

When the check arrives, McCoy pays and when Jim offers to walk him home, he declines. He does lean in and press a chaste kiss at the corner of Jim’s mouth though. 

And Jim laughs, loud enough to make McCoy uncomfortable but soft enough not to draw attention. His ridiculous blue eyes are wide and bright, and this can only be a good thing. “Goodnight,” is what Jim says, but his fingers wrap around McCoy’s for just a moment before he lets go and walks away.

In a way, it’s better than a fuck. 

*

It turns out that Jim is a Starfleet cadet. McCoy doesn’t find out until their fifth date, when Jim shows up on his doorstep wearing a uniform that is the same color as the blood that stained his hands hours earlier. McCoy almost doesn’t want to let him in. 

“Is it Halloween?” It’s nowhere near October but maybe it’s hard to tell here. The seasons don’t change in California the way they do back home. This place is nothing like home and that’s the reason he’s here. 

The uniform looks hideously out of place in McCoy’s small neighborhood where stay at home moms and businessmen reign supreme. He looks like he’s a recruiter, come to drag McCoy off to a life of danger and disease. 

“Nope, it’s Tuesday.” Jim’s grinning from ear to ear, the smiling fool, and he has one foot in McCoy’s flowerbeds, his standard issue boots stepping on the geraniums. 

“You’re crushing my flowers,” McCoy mutters before hauling Jim inside. That’s all he says about it. 

*

The sex is clumsy, like they both are blushing virgins who know nothing about the male form. There are too many arms, too many hands and McCoy can’t quite figure out what to do with his legs. He’s never done this with a man before and for some reason, he gets the feeling Jim has never done this with anyone at all. 

It’s stupid, of course. Jim, with eyes the color of the fucking sky and biceps that bulge out of the sleeves of his t-shirts, has to have quite a few notches on his bedpost. He’s young and gorgeous and almost everything McCoy isn’t. He isn’t a virgin, probably hasn’t been one for years, but it doesn’t help explain why they’re so bad at this. 

McCoy lies on his back, his face flushed, his chest heaving, and tries to avoid looking at Jim. This is the third time they’ve fucked, and McCoy is still bleeding, still in pain when he’s sure it should be easier by now. He knows the male body wasn’t built for this and maybe someone is trying to tell McCoy that he’s taking his life down the wrong road. 

Jim’s fingers are trailing down McCoy’s chest, stopping to play with a tuft of hair before continuing their downward path. “I’m sorry.” 

He almost wants to smack the hand away but he leaves it be. It’s a welcome distraction from the throbbing in his ass. “What are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. This isn’t working.” Jim pulls his hand away and rolls onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow to look down at McCoy. “What the fuck are we doing wrong?” The look on his face is all wrong, his lips are turned down in a way McCoy’s never seen before, his eyes are just a little bit sad like he’s trying to figure out a way to end it all before it goes too far. 

McCoy leans up and presses a soft kiss to Jim’s lips. “Fuck if I know but practice makes perfect.” He grabs at Jim and despite the ache in his ass and the red tint to his thighs, he’s willing to give it another shot if only to make the awful look on Jim’s face go away.

They finally get it right on the sixth time and it only gets better from there. 

*

Jim invites McCoy to his dorm room sometime around their six month anniversary (which they marked with a bottle of whiskey and a hard fuck on the sofa). Before McCoy even steps foot in the room, he knows it’s bound to be a shithole, and he’d rather do anything, go anywhere, than visit his boyfriend’s dorm room. He’s way too goddamn old for this shit.

But he accepts, because Jim asks when his fingers are wrapped around McCoy’s cock, and it’s hard to say no to those lips and eyes. And somewhere in McCoy’s frozen wasteland of a heart, he knows he can’t deny this man anything even if he tried. 

The room is no bigger than a fucking breadbox and McCoy is immediately claustrophobic. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stands in the middle of two twin beds that are pushed to opposite walls. There are posters on the wall, of bands long gone and forgotten, of slogans and mottos and naked women straddling motorcycles. Typical. 

“Roommate,” Jim says, his eyes tracking every move McCoy makes. 

McCoy lived like this, once, a long, long time ago. And he certainly knows from experience that this is no way to live. It’s disgusting and vile, and he’s sure if he swabbed the bedside table, he’d find enough bacteria to kill a small dog. This whole place makes his skin crawl, and he turns on his heel, walking toward the door. “You should just move in with me,” he throws over his shoulder, washing his hands of this entire hellhole. 

Jim follows a few minutes later, a large bag over his shoulder, and McCoy is sure it holds everything he has in the entire world. 

*

It’s not really domestic bliss, nothing like it actually. 

Jim lives like he’s caught in the center of a hurricane. He leaves his socks everywhere, leaves his boxer shorts on the floor, leaves dirty dishes in the sink; he leaves the trash cans overflowing, the grass overgrowing, and there’s a fine layer of soap scum festering on the walls of the shower. This is like living with a teenager, and McCoy certainly didn’t sign up to be anyone’s mother. 

It’s all worth it though – the black ring around the toilet, the boot prints in the hall rug, the fine layer of dust on the coffee table – because when McCoy comes home at night, with shit and blood and whatever else on his scrubs, Jim is there. He’s there with a cup of coffee and a kiss on the lips. He’s there, laying on the floor, feet in the air, padd in his hand, always with a smile on his face when McCoy walks in the door. 

Jim is there and that’s enough to make McCoy put up with living with a glorified frat boy. 

Well, that and the frat boy’s spectacular ass. 

*

McCoy isn’t surprised that Jim is a popular guy. With a smile and personality like that, it’s only natural that people are going to flock to him. What does surprise him is when he comes home to the sound of laughter, not the canned kind that suggests the vidscreen is on, but the loud, obnoxious roar of a well-placed joke. It’s not a sound Leonard wanted to walk in on tonight, not after the day he’s had (death after death after death). 

His living room is full of strangers and Jim is perched on the arm of the sofa like he’s holding court in the middle of suburbia. There are faces all around, taking up almost every surface – the couch, the floor, the coffee table (which isn’t goddamn made for sitting on) – and McCoy only recognizes the one he lives with. It’s a sea of Starfleet cadet red and he’s horribly out of place in his own home.

“Len!” Jim immediately springs off of his perch and wraps his arms around McCoy like he’s some kind of octopus. He’s suddenly all arms and hands, and his fingers are everywhere on McCoy’s body all at once. He doesn’t smell like alcohol but it’s late, and McCoy wouldn’t put it past Jim to have vodka in his biodegradable Solo cup. “It’s about time you came home.”

“Having a party?” It’s not as nonchalant as he’d like, but McCoy is tired and when he closes his eyes, he sees a flat line mocking him. He’d like a finger of bourbon, a hot shower, and to wrap himself around Jim until sleep takes him and doesn’t let go. 

“Study group.” 

McCoy used to have study groups like this, where nothing was accomplished and he drank and drank until he forgot about the paper or project due the next morning. He tries not to think about how many years ago that was; he doesn’t need that self-pity hanging over his head tonight as well. 

There are introductions and McCoy can hardly keep all these faces straight. There’s Uhura (first name unknown, which gets a good laugh and again, McCoy is out of the loop), her boyfriend Spock (Vulcan, stick up the ass by default), an Asian guy who has his arm around some Russian kid who looks far too young to be caught up in the Starfleet recruiting spiel, and too many others to remember or name (except for the green one – Gaila, McCoy couldn’t forget her if he tried, she’s _green_ for fuck’s sake). 

He sits down, holds Jim’s hand like a good boyfriend, and it’s even enough to take his mind off his shitty night. It isn’t horrible, he’s sat through worse, and these people aren’t that bad, not bad at all. 

But then, at the end of the night, Uhura-no-first-name looks at McCoy, her hair swinging over her shoulder. “It must be hard to date someone in Starfleet,” she says, and her too short uniform skirt inadvertently dusts his coffee table as she crosses her legs. 

McCoy says nothing in return. He has nothing to say, doesn’t even know what she’s getting at. He must have one of those wild-eyed, eyebrow crawling up his forehead looks on his face because she smiles and touches his knee. 

“I just mean, well, we graduate in six months. You must be some kind of man to be willing to put up with a permanent long distance relationship.” 

He really doesn’t have the heart to tell her that there’s nothing special about him. And he certainly doesn’t tell her that he didn’t know that Jim graduates so soon or that he has no idea what he’s going to do when that happens, that he doesn’t exactly know how he’s going to live again with no one to come home to. 

So he gives her a smile and excuses himself. The study group goes on, and McCoy curls up in bed, alone. 

*

Starfleet is the elephant that they don’t talk about. It’s constantly there, in the corner, large, ominous and looming, but completely ignored. 

McCoy manages to turn a blind eye to the red eyesore of a uniform that Jim wears more than anything else. He excuses himself when he walks in on any study groups. He refuses to step foot on campus, refuses an invitation to watch a hand to hand combat class, to attend the annual ball, to listen in on a lecture in Xenobiology. There’s always a convenient excuse hanging at the end of his tongue and it’s easy to get out of any and everything that has a Starfleet logo involved. 

It works for a while, for months in fact. But, and even McCoy knows this, it can’t last. 

*

 

Six months turns into three, which turns into one, and somehow the time flies past in a blur of sex, sex, and blood stained scrubs. If this was to be the rest of McCoy’s life, he’s sure he could die a happy man. But that isn’t the case. 

He comes home one evening (luckily blood and brood free), and there’s Jim, in his stupid cadet reds. He’s made dinner, and it’s a miracle that he even knows how to turn on the stove, let alone how to cook an entire meal on it. McCoy was almost certain Jim’s repertoire in the kitchen revolved around a sturdy replicator. 

There are two candles lit, in the center of the table, and every comfort food McCoy could ever want. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans with ham hocks, sweet potato pie. It all feels like a last meal before an execution. 

Jim’s face is hidden in the shadows cast by the poor lighting and he looks every bit as ominous as the conversation they’re about to have. “We need to talk.”

The food goes cold. 

*

“You can join Starfleet. In three years you can be serving on the same ship I am.”

“There’s no guarantee we’d serve together.”

“And, I mean, three years isn’t that long…”

“Jim, I have a fear of flying.”

“Since when?”

“Since forever. It’s called aviophobia. It means fear of dying in something that flies.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

And that’s the end of that conversation.

*

“I hate this,” Jim tells him, fifteen days before he’s due to graduate. He should have his nose stuck in a padd, studying his ass off for finals but instead he’s straddling McCoy’s thighs, and there’s semen on his stomach, and a sheen of sweat beaded across his chest. _This_ is how McCoy wants to remember him and he knows eventually these small details will be lost in time.

McCoy runs his fingers through Jim’s hair, tugs a little at a tangle, and says nothing. If anything, the constant clock ticking down over their heads is something he tries not to think about. Fifteen days seems like a long time, but then so did one month. Six months definitely did too. It’s all slipping through his fingers and he can’t grab onto it. 

“Are you sure you can’t get over this fear of flying? Therapy works wonders, I hear.” Jim is smiling, one of those famous ear to ear grins, but there’s something missing between all those teeth. His eyes are a little too sad and there’s some hint of truth to this question. “Starfleet is always looking for good men.”

“I’m a good man?” 

The grin disappears, and Jim leans down and presses a soft kiss to the corner of McCoy’s mouth. “Best I’ve ever known.” 

McCoy wraps his fingers around Jim’s biceps. He holds on tight, tight enough to leave bruises that’ll be fresh and dark by morning, and he just doesn’t care. Jim doesn’t move away. 

The rub is this – he’d marry this fucker if he could. He’d hang onto him for eternity, and even with an entire universe between them, he’d still cling to whatever vid time he could get, whatever visit he may get every five years. And that’s really no kind of life at all. 

Jim deserves more than that. There’s a whole galaxy and beyond out there to fuck. 

McCoy doesn’t want this to end, but it’s going to anyway. In fifteen days. 

*

Jim starts to disappear out of McCoy’s life, little by little, with seven days to go. 

The dirty underwear on the floor has been picked up, the random socks too. Jim’s favorite mug is missing out of the cupboard and the replicator settings no longer display his favorite foods. 

It’s a slow process, but every day, there’s less and less of Jim around this house and more and more of McCoy. This place is reverting back to the way it was before, before they met in a fucking grocery store. It’s all losing a bit of soul and with every new surface McCoy can now see that was littered with little bits of Jim before, his chest aches just a little and he knows it’s not from a sudden case of angina. 

There’s a bag sitting innocently by the front door. It’s not full but it’s getting there. In one week it’ll be gone and all that will be left is an empty house and the lonely schmuck who lives in it. 

*

They celebrate with one day to go. Not because Jim is leaving, shipping off to the outer reaches of space, never to be heard of again, but because he passed his finals, with flying fucking colors. McCoy never had any doubts about it, even though Jim studies about as much as he cleans. 

They commandeer a small booth at the back of a shady bar, one that doesn’t cater to the typical cadet crowd. There’s neither hide nor hair of Starfleet in this particular place. McCoy nurses a beer and Jim has his hands wrapped around a shot of Jaeger that he’s barely taken a sip of. They sit side by side, thigh to thigh, fingers tangled together beneath the table. 

“I’ll keep in contact,” Jim says, his lips brushing against McCoy’s ear to be heard over the too loud boom of the bass. “I promise.” 

It’s a hollow promise and it means nothing. McCoy smiles and tightens his fingers around Jim’s, so tight he’s bound to be cutting off circulation and he doesn’t give a fuck at all. He’s not really sure how he fell in love with some idiotic genius from Podunk Iowa, but it happened and now it’s all on the brink of disaster. 

That doesn’t mean McCoy isn’t going to hold on for as long, and as tightly, as he can. He might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts.

*

And then McCoy is sitting toward the back of a crowd, lost in the middle of families and friends, and people who mean something to other people. He’s stuck between a couple of Andorians, and he feels out of place, foreign, and he can’t help but squirm in his uncomfortable metal folding chair. 

He’s there for support though, had to haggle and beg to get out of his hospital shift, but here he is, watching Jim graduate from Starfleet Academy. 

He sits with his hands clasped tightly together as he watches Jim walk away from him and toward whatever bright and starry future the black vacuum of space promises him. And he claps when appropriate, smiles when he thinks he should, but never once is he truly happy about any of it. 

Happiness is completely overrated anyway.

*

When the ceremony is over, they go home. Jim, in his shiny dress uniform, McCoy in the only suit he owns (so old that it has a tear in the right sleeve and one of the buttons is in danger of falling off). They stand in the living room, staring at one another, chests heaving, eyes blinking, and mouths unmoving. What is there to say now?

There aren’t months left, not even days. There’s nothing but hours separating Jim from the future that leaves McCoy behind, his two feet planted firmly on Terra Firma. There’s so little time, and it’s all swirling down the drain, faster and faster like an out of control carnival ride. And they’re wasting it all by just standing here.

So McCoy makes the first move, slides his palm against Jim’s cheek and rubs his thumb against the five o’clock shadow beneath his skin. It’s rough, sharp, and he hopes to feel the burn from this all over his body for days after.

He takes Jim apart, piece by piece, there in the living room. He strips him down to nothing, lays him on the floor and McCoy can’t help but think that this is _right_ , that Jim belongs here between the four walls that they’ve called home for so long now. 

McCoy runs his tongue over Jim, from head to toe, memorizing every detail, implanting and hiding memories amongst his taste buds. Maybe they’ll stick there, maybe he won’t forget (unlikely). He runs his hand over every surface he can reach, on every body part, on every hair there is. 

He fucks into him, barely slick enough to do the job but he wants Jim to feel this tomorrow, when he’s nothing but a lowly ensign on the _Enterprise_ , and McCoy is light years away with his hands deep in someone’s chest. He wants Jim to feel this tomorrow and for the rest of time, but it’s an impossible and ridiculous task. 

He takes his time, takes hours and hours until it’s dawn, and they’re laying side by side, shoulder pressed against shoulder, thigh pressed against thigh. Then time is up and Jim is no longer next to him. He’s showering and gathering his belongings and then standing in front of McCoy with his bag over his shoulder. This looks a hell of a lot like the day Jim moved in but it’s not the same at all. 

“Bye, Len.” Jim presses a soft kiss to McCoy’s cheek and then he’s gone. He never even looks back.

McCoy just lies there, on the carpet, and doesn’t move a muscle. It takes far too long for it to dawn on him that he’s all alone now. 

*

Eventually, McCoy gets up. He isn’t as young as he used to be and his back is practically screaming at him. His head throbs, maybe the start of a migraine, and there’s this heat in his chest, a pulsation, an ache, and he pushes it down, deep and far and hopes he never feels it again. 

He stands in the shower, for far too long, and tries not to notice that Jim’s shampoo is gone or that there’s only one razor on the sink. It’s hard not to notice what’s been there in front of his face for so long. 

The hot water cascades over his back and it feels just short of amazing. It doesn’t help the heat in his chest, the awful burn behind his eyes, but it loosens the knots in his spine and makes him feel almost human again. Almost. 

He stays in there far too long, until he uses up the whole supply of hot water, and there’s no one else to blame for it this time. McCoy’s fingers are pruned, wrinkled, and he wraps a towel around his waist. 

Not bothering to get dressed, he plops down at the kitchen table and tries to contemplate dinner. It’s a replicator night but he can’t even bring himself to move that far to push the button. He rests his head in his palm and falls asleep. 

*

McCoy has no idea how much time has passed, how long he’s been sitting at the table, but what he does know is that a loud bang wakes him up and that there’s an idiot standing in front of him. An idiot or a hallucination. He isn’t sure which one it is yet. 

“What the fuck?” He rubs at his eyes and he’s sure he’s seeing things. “Jim?”

And there, in all his stupid glory, is Jim, bag on his shoulder, gold command shirt shining brightly in the dim kitchen lighting. “So there I was,” he says, plopping down in the seat across from McCoy, “about to get on the shuttle to go up to the _Enterprise_ , and I couldn’t help but think something.”

“Look, all that shit I said about darkness and silence doesn’t amount to anything, kid. Your eyeballs aren’t going to bleed. Probably.” McCoy rubs at his eyes again and in the back of his mind, he wonders if this is a dream. He reaches out and pokes Jim in the arm – solid, fleshly, and that almost confirms the hallucination diagnosis. 

Jim rolls his eyes and pulls his arm away, rubbing at the spot where McCoy was poking. “You’re an asshole. I’m not sure why I came back here to tell you this.”

“Well, can you hurry it up? I have a date with my replicator.” 

Then there’s a hand on McCoy’s arm, nails biting into his skin, and this all feels too real to be a figment of his imagination. “I had an epiphany. I think I sort of love you.”

“Sort of?” McCoy’s never been one for romance but he at least knows that he loves the idiot in front of him. Not sort of, but all the way. Homerun, touchdown, field goal, all that shit. No maybes about it. “You sure know how to woo a guy.”

“Alright, not sort of. I love you, and the idea of not having someone around to hurdle insults at me almost twenty-four hours a day is unbearable.” Jim’s hand slides down and he wraps his fingers around McCoy’s. “So I left.”

It hits McCoy now and there’s something wrong with this picture all right. It’s not a hallucination, but there is a real goddamn idiot in front of him. “You went fucking AWOL?” Somehow he’s not even surprised, but he feels his heart rate spike, his respirations quicken, and this isn’t quite the way he wanted to keep Jim around. 

“I doubt they’ve noticed yet but that’s about the gist of it…” 

“Are you brain dead? Do you even think about these things before you do them? You can’t just leave a military organization like that. You’ll end up in jail!” 

“Peacekeeping, Len. It’s a peacekeeping organization.” Jim’s fingers are tracing the lines in McCoy’s palm, tracing his life line, his love line, and if McCoy believed in any of that shit, he’d ask about what the future holds. He sort of already has an idea though. 

“Are you sure you want to do this? There’s probably still time to change your mind, go back and catch that shuttle. The _Enterprise_ is everything you’ve been working toward for three years. You want to just give that up? For a schmuck like me?”

“Yeah, fuck me, but I do. So you might want to pack a few things and put some clothes on. This will be the first place they’re going to look when they notice I’m a no call no show.” Jim is grinning and if McCoy’s heart wasn’t fluttering around in his chest, he’d probably slap him upside the head for all of this. 

“This is a terrible idea.” Maybe this is the worst idea since the dawn of time. This is no way to lead a life, but at least he won’t be living it alone. This is McCoy’s chance to hang onto this asshole and never let go. And he’s not about to let it all slip through his fingers. He’s been given a second chance, an incredibly stupid one, but this isn’t the time to be picky. 

Sometimes there’s no point in fighting the inevitable, or Jim Kirk when he’s got his heart set on something. Sometimes you don’t look a fucking gift horse in the mouth. McCoy just swallows down his protests and accepts it by leaning across the table and pressing his lips against Jim’s. “I love you too, moron.”

So McCoy packs a bag, throws together random items while Jim perches on the edge of the bed, that ear to ear grin on his face. 

Then they leave and walk away to face the unknown. Hand in hand, they leave San Francisco behind, the tiny house with the geraniums and shower scum. They leave Starfleet and the cold black of space behind. McCoy has no idea where they’re going to go, no idea how they’ll live or make money or survive day to day. None of it really matters anyway. 

What matters is that they have a future. A future that is still starry and bright, but now it belongs to _them_ , and McCoy is fucking determined to make the most of it. 

*


End file.
